neopixel battery powered costume

EL Wire/Tape/Panels, LEDs, pixels and strips, LCDs and TFTs, etc products from Adafruit

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grayconstruct
 
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neopixel battery powered costume

Post by grayconstruct »

Trying to build a *minimal* circuit for a costume, two 16 pixel ring boards, arduino mini pro, alkaline battery pack.

1 would I likely get more battery life using 4AA and a LM2940 regulator (I have used 7805, they typically need 6 or 7v to even work and trying to avoid 6AA pack) but either way there will be efficiency losses in the regulator; *or* by using 3AA batteries (4.5v) with no regulator?

2 Is the 1000uf capacitor important for a battery circuit? I am not aware of voltage spikes like there are with power supplies during switch-on and I read Alkalines naturally inhibit some transients. Just trying to reduce component count and size for the costume.

I will probably limit the LED's to 75% brightness and more color than white and only 1/3 on at any given time, so I don't expect to be near the 1920mA max of 32 LEDs, probably more like 400mA.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: neopixel battery powered costume

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

I'd go with the 4.5v battery pack and skip the regulator. The capacitor is not generally needed with battery supplies.

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michaelmeissner
 
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Re: neopixel battery powered costume

Post by michaelmeissner »

FWIW, I've powered a Gemma using the 1200maH lipo battery powering two 16 LED rings for over 24 hours (I left to go to work at 24-25 hours, and when I got back home ~ 36 hours, the battery was depleted). I kept the power level down to 30 max (this is in fact for the hat with 2 rings that is in my icon photo).

Now, this was with the older neopixels, that could be powered directly with a Lipo. I don't know if the new neopixels would allow you to get away with powering the rings at 3.7v power any more.

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